NAB

While most broadcasters and equipment vendors still view the annual NAB Show as an essential stop, attendance and exhibitors have declined the past few years. Show organizers are being proactive by tweaking the schedule of next year’s show in an effort to attract fresh traffic.

Broadcasters have told the FCC not to pay attention to the tech companies seeking to harpoon the great white (spaces) whale by preventing broadcasters from using vacant channels to help in the transition to next-gen ATSC 3.0 TV transmissions. That came in a call this week between NAB execs and officials at the FCC’s Media Bureau and Incentive Auction Task Force.

Broadcasters and satellite operators are at odds over who would be burdening whom under a new carriage election proposal the FCC is considering. The NAB and NCTA have joined in proposing changes to the carriage election — must carry or retrans — process, which the FCC is looking to streamline as part of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s deregulatory weed-whacking initiative.

Broadcasters, led by the NAB, are urging lawmakers to let the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act Reauthorization, or STELAR, expire on Dec. 31. STELAR is at the top of NAB’s legislative hit list in part because it has morphed into a tool that one company in particular — DirecTV — has been using to bypass stations and retransmission consent fees in up to a dozen markets. But of larger concern is that cable and satellite operators will use the legislation as a vehicle to weaken broadcasters’ retransmission consent rights.

Broadcasters are telling the FCC its proposal to open up the 6 GHz spectrum for unlicensed wireless is not ready for prime time, and may never be. Broadcasters use the band for auxiliary (BAS) operations and NAB says the FCC’s proposed interference protections — limiting it to lower-power, indoor operations — miss the mark, particularly since some camera transmitters used to relay footage back to stations also operate indoors and at low power, so they would be in the interference line of fire even with those limitations on unlicensed devices.

The National Association of Broadcasters continued to lead the industry’s lobbying charge in 2018, spending $14.16 million on lobbying efforts last year, according to an Inside Radio review of disclosure filings. That represented an 8% decline compared to what the NAB allocated to lobbying in 2017. The reports also show the NAB reduced its lobbying spending by 23% from 2016 to 2018.